


don't break it

by arghmuffin



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Betrothal Necklace (Avatar), Book 1: Water (Avatar), Canon Compliant, F/M, Katara's Necklace, Slight zutara - Freeform, YES this is a ship, maybe zutara if you squint, zuko gets attached
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:14:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28012242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arghmuffin/pseuds/arghmuffin
Summary: He's always been fascinated by the ocean.Or: Zuko finds Katara's necklace, and somehow promises tie in.
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar), Zuko/Katara's Necklace
Comments: 8
Kudos: 53





	don't break it

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I am posting this instead of working on ZKDD. lol sorry
> 
> So I'm not really sure what this is or if I like it? At first it was supposed to be Zutara, but then he got weirdly attached to the necklace, and then this happened.
> 
> Also, I wrote this and then realized that he met June by mistake, so... let's just ignore that. I hope you enjoy, and constructive criticism is welcome!

/

Zuko holds the engraved stone in his hand, thin and smooth. It seems familiar, but he’s never seen anything like it before; blue, worn, and attached to a dark ribbon. Perhaps it had something to do with the girl he had seen wearing it.

Iroh stood in the corner, sipping his tea.

“What exactly do you plan to do with the necklace, Prince Zuko?” his uncle asks him, something unreadable in his gaze.

Zuko had never been too good at reading people. “I’ll hire a bounty hunter to track them down. I heard there was one with a shirshu who can find anyone in the world with just their scent.” 

He turns, still clutching the necklace in his fist; Iroh doesn’t answer, eyes fixed on the warm tea leaves at the bottom of his cup. After a pause, Zuko leaves him and walks to his room, feeling strangely unsettled. 

The pendant feels cold in his hand. Something like a promise.

/

He stares at the ocean an inordinate amount.

Well, it’s not exactly like there’s much else to see on an old, rusting ship, sailing the borders of the Earth Kingdom. It’s water and water and water, sometimes the occasional sea creature.

Still, he finds himself liking the endlessly vast expanse of blue, an open landscape capable of swallowing him whole and tossing him to the sky in the span of a second.

The sea reminds him of the pendant tied around his wrist, hidden under an itchy, grey sleeve. He keeps it there for safekeeping, but also because it’s inexplicably calming, and tracing the design on it makes it a little easier to breathe.

He’s always liked spending time by the ocean, and now, it’s while memorizing the feeling of the necklace; a necklace with unknown meaning to it, belonging to a stranger, but he thinks he could give it another one. Just for him.

Blue is a calming color. When he dreams, it’s not of flame, but of the sea, surrounding him in an unearthly glow.

/

Katara’s eyes stare at him hatefully, following him all the way from where she was bound to the tree. 

Deep blue, icy and sharp, it pierced a little at something in his soul, tugged at a part of his heart. He had already decided he hated the feeling, similar to guilt and uncomfortably foreign.

Zuko holds the necklace up to her neck, just out of reach; perhaps he did not have to hire a bounty hunter after all. 

There’s a strange amount of value in sentimentality, and Zuko can feel it as he tells her she can have it back, as long as she gives him the Avatar. Not just for Katara; he’s strangely loath to let it go, but he’s also grown used to the feeling of the stone underneath his fingertips, mapping out wherever he needed to go. He likes to think that the artful swirls lead him to the Avatar, that the curvy waves bring him to Katara. When she tells him to jump in the river he might be right.

(Iroh does not mention how tightly he grips it after they escape, but his knowing gaze flickers down to his hand.)

Bribery was not enough. Whatever value Katara had placed on the necklace was not worth the Avatar, and he would have to find the bounty hunter after all.

He resists the urge to throw the necklace against the wall. It shouldn’t mean anything to him, not like it does to her.

/

He paces. He meditates. He walks every part of the ship, eats the bland komodo chicken they serve at dinner, and resists the urge to throw it up.

Zuko cannot find the necklace.

It’s the gateway to capturing the Avatar. The easiest way to come back home, to warm beaches and Father’s love and the rich, red walls of the palace. The necklace, to him, however Water Tribe, still represents the Fire Nation.

But he’s also grown attached to the small, blue pendant, which had always provided him a strange sort of comfort. It’s someone else’s but at the same time he likes to think it’s his, from the familiar way of its touch, to the silky wind of its ribbon.

He panics and practices his katas and checks every inch of the engine, but he cannot find the necklace. 

(When Zuko dreams, he dreams of his father. There is no blue to soothe the ache in his heart. When he stares at the ocean it’s not enough. The waves try to swallow him, toss him back and forth until his lungs hurt, until he finally surfaces, and it’s getting increasingly hard to swim.)

But not even two days after he loses it, Zuko finds it dropped on a hidden corner of the deck, and nearly cries. 

Brushing away some of the soot on the ribbon, he sits on the floor in relief, and stares at it intently. 

In his hands lay his future, sharp and smooth and unforgiving. It is a promise in more ways than one.

/

 _A betrothal necklace,_ Iroh tells him when he asks. _They are used in the Northern Water Tribe to signify marriage, although I am unsure what they mean in the South._

He thinks of Katara, a year or two younger than him, and hopes it means something different. She seems too young to be married, but the Fire Nation school curriculum taught them nothing about the Water Tribes except that they were barbarians, so he wouldn’t know.

He doesn’t often like to think about her, the true owner of the jewelry he carries with him day in and day out. But water always reminds him of her, and too often he finds himself looking at the ocean, drowning in a whirlpool of sea, unsure of whether or not he wants to float.

Thinking of her always makes him feel _something_ , unidentifiable and confusing, and when his palm burns with the white-hot intensity of a suppressed spark, he presses her betrothal necklace to his hand until it burns.

She visits him when he’s asleep, a barely memorable dream of wispy, fiery rage and gentle caress. He wakes, oddly panicked and content at the same time.

The bounty hunter is only a few hours away, and his wrist feels the heaviest it’s ever been.

/

June, Zuko decides, is the most impressive bounty hunter he’s ever met.

Not that he’s met many. But the shirshu she owns could sniff him out of the bottom of the ocean, so he feels like it’s still an accurate statement to make.

(Maybe he’s already there.)

They find the Avatar in a nun’s abbey, but it’s the Water Tribe siblings they meet first. Seeing Katara is like being doused in a bucket of cold water, and he stops for a second, remembering her hateful, blue eyes, and a vague, blurry dream. The necklace is uncomfortably noticeable on his wrist.

Then Zuko gets paralyzed by the shirshu and the Avatar plucks his most valuable item right from his hands. He lays stiff, unable to move as his destiny runs away from him, clad in a flurry of yellow and orange, disappearing on a bison headed to the sky.

A bitter feeling swells in his chest, and he has to blink back the sting in his eyes. He failed once again, and the necklace was gone, back to its rightful owner.

The dirt floor digs into his cheek and he lies there, shirshu venom already worn off. For a second, he’s not sure what to do anymore, how to live without the meaning and purpose the pendant gave to him.

/

Zuko stands by the metal railing on his ship, staring out at the ocean.

There’s a hollow feeling in his chest, a faint ache where something used to be. He’s not exactly sure what he misses; the necklace, or what it symbolized, what it was capable of giving to him. All he knows is that the hole in his chest is the same round, flat shape of a thin disk.

“You will continue to chase the Avatar, won’t you, Prince Zuko?” Uncle Iroh asks him, eyes on his Pai Sho board. Zuko frowns and glances down at his empty hand, wishing there was something for him to trace, to ground him.

“Yes,” he answers firmly. He will continue to chase the Avatar, with or without the necklace. Because he doesn’t need it, he doesn’t need the extra help. He will capture the Avatar using only his ship and his wits, if only because no one can run forever.

A phantom weight presses down on his hand. He doesn’t miss it, really.

/

In the sky, Katara slowly draws the pattern of the Water Tribe symbol, tracing along the grooves of her necklace. Tracing stone. Her mother’s memory.

Tracing a promise.

/

**Author's Note:**

> Not really sure why I made the promises a thing but it is.
> 
> Thanks for reading, have a nice day!


End file.
